Billionaire's Divorce and Immigration Issues

to promise financial support. Facebook groups with names like Sponsors US carried dozens of posts offering financial supporters, some demanding up to ten thousand dollars. According to the Associated Press, US Citizenship and Immigration Services warns about potential scams with the humanitarian parole program, but there's no indication that applications have been rejected because of concerns that potential sponsors might

be requesting money joining these. Immigration law expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland to Night, Leon explain what's happening here, So here's what this situation is. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has responded to various events around the world with a new concept calls allowing

people to be paroled into the United States. They basically created this bifurcated process whereby an American could actually come forward and step up to the plate and say, you know what, I'm going to take the financial responsibility responsoring a particular foreign nationals. And then if that person gets vetted and it is used to have sufficient assets to

do that, that that too happens. And then the foreign national comes forward and declares they're desired to want to be paroled and to essentially be within the offices of this foreign national and assuming those backgrounds checks clear, then the person can actually be paroled into the United States. And what a parole is is it's basically a permission document that says for a year, you have legal status in America, but at any point we can kick you

out within the year if we revoke your parole. And within that year, you're gonna have to figure out what you want to do. Do you want to apply for asylum, do you want to do something? You know us, but you get to come in for a year and figure out what your plan is. And so what has happened is there are obviously many more people who demands to come into the United States, then there are a supply of individuals who are willing to actually and legitimately come

forward and sponsor people financially for these parole documents. And so, like anything, nature of horrors a vacuums, and where people can find a way to make money, they do. And so people have decided, well, what if we were to sell sponsorship to some of these foreign nationals so they

can pay to have people sponsor them. And so the government, having found out that this is now happening through various vomitoring of social media and talking to people and doing intelligence work, is trying to figure out, well, given the fact that we kind of made this program up in the fly and didn't actually say or figure out a way where this would be illegal, what are we to do now? Is this something we will allow to happen? Do we have to do something to not permit it

to happen? And the government has sort of caught betwixt them between there because it seems odd. So you're paying someone, let's say, ten dollars for a promise to provide financial support, is that a real promise. Are they going to be providing the financial backup that the government is looking for. I mean, it's absolutely against for sure the spirit of the program. I think the question is what does sponsorship

mean in this context. What I mean by that is to say, this process generates itself from something that happened in where the government was concerned about marriage fraud and what it said was, We're not just gonna let anybody marry a US citizens that U S citizens who marries a foreign national has to make a sufficient amount of income and actually say, if my wife, for my husband, whoever the spouse is, that the four nationals ends up using any government resources, then I agreed to be on

the hook for paying those government resources. The government can't come in and have to sponsor my spouse for me. I have to do this. And so that's where the concept is based off of. And although that concept is very very very rarely enforced. The Trump administration was about to start doing that near the end of the first term of the Trump administration, to start coming after people

and asking for money to be paid. It hadn't really been done since now this new program is sort of mimicking that but doesn't have the same statutory guideline, because that's part of the affidavit of sport was a statutory thing for that marriage issue. And so the question is if you're doing something that's not even a regulation, because

this is all memo. Bay if you're basically writing a memo creating a parole program and creating the sponsorship requirement, does the government have any teeth to whatsoever to punish someone who's being a sponsor just because they're being paid to be a sponsor. And so that's the problem that the government has encountered. So it seems like there's a real possibility that fraud is involved. When they're filling out the forms and making these promises, they had to say

what the relation is to the person? Right right? I mean, for sure, there's definitely if you commit fraud on the form if you say that you intend the papers for benefits of money if they don't actually do it, or if you say you're they're relative and you're not actually they're relative, or if you declare that you're doing this and good faith and you haven't been paid for it, which I think they're going to try to amend the form to do that that you can for sure, charge

the person for fraud there, but it's something that I think they didn't even think about at the beginning, that this could be something that would happen. And of course, you always when you do one of these programs, have to be worried that bad actors will try to manipulate it, because that's been the history of any immigration programs of

the United States. You've often said that most of the people who are coming here have someone that they're you know, intend to go to relative shouldn't most of these, you know, the Cubans and Nicaraguans and the Venezuelans have people here who could vouch for them this way, Oh agree. So for the people who would normally have used this program, there was not a problem at all finding a sponsor. And fact there are many many more people who have sponsors than there are going to be plots for these

thirty six thousand visas a month. The point is, though, there are many people who don't know anybody, and now those people are being told, well, here's a way for you to know somebody. But what what is happening is not that there's an insufficient number of people who have sponsors. What's happening is that not every single person in that country has a sponsor, but by buying a sponsor you now open up the possibility of being sponsored to even

more people than could have otherwise had that possibility. So these are people who would never have come but now might come because they can acquire a sponsor. I want to turn down to this case that's before the Supreme Court in two thousand three, sit to Wilkinson fled government persecution in his native Trinidad and Tobega for the United

States on a tourist visa. He overstayed the visa and had a son who's a US citizen and who's regularly hospitalized due to severe asthma tax and when the government moved to deport him, Wilkinson asked for what's called cancelation of removal, arguing that his son and the boy's mother need him because he's the family's soul breadwinner. The boy's mother suffers from depression and would be left unable to

cope medically or financially without his support. And immigration judge denied his request, as did the Third Circuit, and he's

asking the Supreme Court to look at his case. So explain the background here whenever a don citizen goes through the removal process, if they have a claim that the Immigration Court and or the Board of Immigration Appeals applied the wrong laws their case, or incorrectly decided the law, or incorrectly did something that violated the constitution, those claims of law can be appealed to the courts of appeal.

What can't be appealed are factual determinations. There's a small exception for factual determinations and asylum cases, but mostly factual determinations cannot be appealed. Now, three years ago, there was a decision in the Supreme Court that talked about these waivers of deportation, which is what happens is sometimes a deportation order has entered against you, but you can actually get a waiver where the judge says, Okay, I know we can deport you, but we will waive this deportation

because you qualify. As a matter of discretion, you qualify for this waiver and so I'll give it to you. So you get to say. And what the court said is if something is an issue of mixed questions of facts and law, then they can review it. So now in this upcoming case that people are asking for review in the Supreme Court. What happens is the following. There's about four thousands plots a year for this type of

relief called cancelation of removal. And what it is is if you're here without any status at all period and the government is trying to deport you, you can actually avoid deportation if you can prove that you've been here for over ten years. That's the first key thing, and secondly that your deportation is going to be causing. And it's a very difficult standard to meet. An exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a U. S. Citizen is usually a US citizen child, but it can also be a U. S.

Citizen spoused. And if you could prove that, then you could be allowed to say and actually get lawful permanent residency. So the question in this case was that the court felt that the amount of hardship that the person showed was not sufficient to meet this exceptional and extremely unusual heart of standard. We would all agree if the court got the facts wrong in this kind of question, you

couldn't review that. You know, if the court thought, let's say they say this person didn't do anything for the community, and the person said, well, I had evidence that I volunteered in my church, so you should have put that in there and waited as a discretionary thing. That kind

of thing wouldn't be able to be reviewed. But the question is if everybody agrees on the fact, can you then make a determination that could be reviewed about whether those facts were sufficient to me this exceptional and extremely unusual hardship standard or is that just for the judge to decide and that can't get reviewed, And so that's what's going to be potentially pizzing into the Supreme Court.

So you know, a lot of people who have been here for a decade have children who are US citizens, and so it's not enough to say, well, I have three children who are US citizens and they're gonna miss me and it's gonna be awful for them. Correct, that's considered normal hardship. There's actually a famous Board of Immigration Appeals case called matter of Restina's and in that case, the person had something like three or four U. S citizens children, one with a severe mental illness, another one

with a severe medical problem. And then the problem was if this person was deported, then not only could those kids not be taken care of, but she also had parents here in the United States and siblings, and the court said, when we put all of this stuff together, you barely make it. And so they didn't say, Okay, this is a slam dunk. And that was a case for where an immigration just said no, and then the Board of Immigration Appeal said, yeah, you you make it,

but you barely make it. And so that was the kind of thing that was considered exceptional as extremely unusual hardship. And so that's the question here is does the person in this case meet that standard? And you know, to show it, you have to basically show serious medical issues or something of that kind that the U s it is in relative has that requires not only them to stay here, but perhaps you more importantly to stay here so you can give them the care they need or

pay for the care that they need. And that's the kind of thing that's being talked about here. So here, I think that the sun has asthma and the mother is depressed, so she can't take care of him or support him financially. So now in this case, the immigration judge said no, did the Board of Immigration take a look at it? Yes, So in every case, both have to look at it, the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the decision actually always gets appealed

from the Board of Immigration Appeals. But what happens is the Board of Immigration Appeals often like here, acts like a rubber stamp, so they don't actually issue anything more. So that's why people say Board of Immigration a peals, But sometimes it's actually the immigration judge who they make the decision, and the Board of Immigration Appeal just as affirmed, and so then that decision gets appealed to the Court

of Appeals. And so exactly like you said, this case here was the one where the child has as mine. They said that, you know, without some mother they wouldn't be able to betically or financially provide for this child who has asked not tax. And they viewed that as hardship, but again not exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. And so that's the question. And you know, this is like a perfect gray area type of case where if you get

a very sympathetic judge they might approve it. But if you're get a judge that doesn't want to approve any of these, then they wouldn't approve this. And the question is can you set a standard for a case like this or is this really just up to the judge? And I think that's what the Supreme Court is going to be grappling with. Are the circuits split on this? Yes? Correct,

the circuits are split on this. And so there are some circuits like the Ninth Circuit who says, yes, this can be reviewed because this is actually not a discretionary determination. This is a legal determination as to whether a specific agreed upon that a fact meets the legal standard of exceptional and extremely unusual art chip. But the Third Circuit says, no,

this is not a legal question. This is a discretionary question, basically saying have you sufficiently tugged at the discretionary heart strings of the judge who get the relief? And so it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court thinks

about this. Yet another case that now the Ninth Circuit is going to hear on banks over temporary protected status and so Trump pullback protections from migrants m L. Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan and also Nepal and Honduras, and the Biden administration has redesignated Haiti and Sudan for TPS. Status. Isn't that the Biden administration's decision whether or not there should be a TPS status for a country. I mean, why is

this correct? Interestingly, this lawsuit started in the Trump administration when Trump tried to say, look, there's a lot of countries where their nationals were given temporary protective status for disasters that happened in the nineties, and so why here in the second part of the twenty one century are people still to stay on the basis of a disaster that was supposed to temporarily affect them in And so there was this lawsuit saying, yeah, but what you did

was you were acting in a discriminatory manner that violated equal Protection clause, and you also violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not explaining the current conditions in the country and how those conditions have been effected since that mentor

of disaster. And so all of this was in litigation, and then the Trump administration leeds and the Biden administration to come fact and oddly enough, as you point out, the Buiding administration doesn't continue the temporary protective status for some of these countries, and it actually continues to choose to litigate this issue, and so now this issue where the applicants had actually lost in the Ninth circuits, they are actually now getting a full on bond, meaning well

that's the full Courtcuse in the ninth circuits there's so many judges. You get twelve judges, which is considered the full court. You get you get an on bank panel of well twelve judges. But but those judges are now going to consider what will be done? Could you an temporary protective states? That way, it affects the question if the government wins and wins all of the lawsuits, will the Biden administration simply find a different route to protect

these people's fighting effects? Now, because I think what they've had a problem with, at least justifying this intellectually is I think they too think that there's a complication with saying that the conditions justify extensions of EPs. I think they think when that was sort of being done on an automated basis every eighteen months, that was one thing.

But once an actual Department of Homeland Security, even if it was President Trump's department, it doesn't matter, went through the facts and said, look, we need to break this chain of causation. When they feel like it's true, there's not a natural disaster from to justify this continuous of PPS anymore. And so it will be interesting to see

what happens after all of this is over. Do they cite some new reason that's more current to protect these people under temporary protective status or does that end up falling away yet again, That's going to be very interesting to see after this litigation is all over. It's supposed to be temporary, So why continue to protect people if you know the reason for protecting them is gone. That's

sort of belies the whole the whole PILM. There was a bit of inertia that happened here where when the first happened in there were these earthquakes and hurricanes and things for these countries from Central America, you know. So there was eighteen months and then there was another eighteen months, and people sort of understood those first thirty six months, and then for the next eighteen months people said, well,

maybe we need this last eighteen months. And then once you got past those eighteen months, then it was well, people have already been here for five years, six years, they've had U S citizen kids. Now you're going to deport them. What a creation of a tragedy you're doing. And so then that was the argument, and that sort of was inertia upon inertia upon inertia, and you ended up with this situation where you couldn't emotionally justify kicking

people out who's now been here twenty five years. And so that's why Congress has these bills to try to get these folks green cards, but they have not passed. And so we are where we are, which is that the real purpose of the statute, which is to give temporary relief very difficult to argue that disaster is still the basis for someone saying in America, and so the question is what do you do that? So you know, every week there's another immigration problem, more policy that there's

news on. So I guess it doesn't come as much as a surprise that a new Gallipo that was released today revealed that Americans are more dissatisfied with immigration into the country than they've been in years. Sixtent of respondents are dissatisfied with US immigration overall, and that's the lowest reading in a decade, and most say that they want

immigration decreased. I wonder if a lot of this is because of the bussing of migrants from Texas has led to people in different parts of the country, you know, being exposed to the problems of placing migrants. I think this is all part of it. I think really what anything comes down to with regard to immigration law, or immigration policy or immigration acceptance by the populace in the United States is the following people of r A VACU.

And so what happens is right now the only people talking about immigration are people pointing out that there's a problem with the immigration system. So Biden administration doesn't want to spend any time talking about immigration. In fact, in the State of the Union, they may have mentioned it for thirty seconds. If they mentioned it for thirty seconds,

it was too long. And what really comes down to is this, whether you set the level at a high level, or you set the level at a low level, or you set the level at a medium level, what the American people want is a strategy of explanation and a

feeling that it's not out of control. And that's the key for the Biden administration is to explain to people why the system is the way it is, why it's not out of control to the extent that they can explain that what their plan is to get it further under control, and why the system and the decisions they're making.

This is the key part actually advanced the interests of America and American because a lot of the rhetoric for better and for worse for both because I think it's helpful and it's good to be compassionate to the people trying to flee a lot of terrible conditions in their

home countries. But a lot of the rhetoric you hear from immigration advocate and from some people in the Democratic Party is a rhetoric that centered on the interests of the foreign national entering the United States and the problems they're suffering. And while that's understandable and sympathetic, you have to if you're going to sell a system and a and a series of decisions, selling on why that decision and that system is good for America and the national

interest of nine States. And that's where the Republicans have made very good head road in talking about immigration in that way. They constantly use this phrase the national interest, and they constantly say that only low levels of immigration

are good for the national interests of Americans. But because they're the only people making this argument, then that's what's going to be assumed, because nobody's making an argument about why moderate levels or higher levels are better for the American interest And so that's why you see this disconnect where more and more and more people continued to say on a higher and higher level that low immigration is good for America's national interests and that the current system

is out of control. So the problem really is moving forward, can to buy the administration explain what it's doing, articulate a vision, articulate a system, and explain why that system and that vision is in the interests of America and Americans well. And also, immigration satisfaction was highest during the early part of former President Trump's term. So this is something that the Biden administration is going to have to

answer when it comes time for the elections. Correct, That's the point, and the key thing is if you look at our president Trump changed the conversation on immigration. It wasn't just that he lowered the levels of immigration. People are not so sensitive to the numbers being high or low.

People are sensitive to the discussion that the immigration system is being tailored to the national interests of the United States, and that was constantly a praise that he used, and he constantly tried to explain at least his vision of immigration, which was that the less immigration that there was, the more that was in America's interest. Thanks so much, Leon, you always have the answers, and it's a pleasure to

have you on the show. That's Leon Fresco of Hondon Knight, the wife of billionaire Israel is he in Lander, filed an explosive lawsuit against the Millennial Management chairman and then

withdrew it the day after. In the suit, Carol Englander claimed that her husband of forty eight years conducted a year's long campaign of pressure and coercion against her and her girlfriend, having them followed nearly constantly, hacking their emails and phones and interfering with their family lives in order to get her to sign a post nuptial Agreementzzy Englander has a net worth of eleven point five billion dollars according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and his a strange

wife says he got more than of the value of their marital assets in the post nup. On Friday, Carol Englander dropped the suit, which was filed by her and her girlfriend, Swiss art dealer Dominique Levy, a spokesperson for england Or, said it was dropped in an effort to resolve this as a family matter. Joining me is Peter Walser, the founding partner of Walzer, Melcher and Yoda and L, a family law firm. So Carol Englander is claiming that she signed the post up under darrest. Tell us a

little about her allegations. Well, it sounded like what we would call corrosive control, in other words, a pattern of stocking rating, threatenings for having a relationship with her friend Dominique. And it sounded like, according to Carol, there was a lot of pressure on her and it was a very unpleasant situation I imagined for all of them after a

very long marriage, almost fifty years. Do you know if there was a pre nuptial agreement in this case, I don't know, and there's been no report of that, so one would think, considering the length of the marriage, probably no premierital agreement. He allegedly got her to sign an agreement before they divorced. Well, I don't know that they're even divorced. There's no indication that they actually got divorced. Tell me about postnups in general. Do a lot of

couples have postnups? Is it unusual? I mean, I've been doing this over forty years and I've done literally hundreds of we call them premyoral agreements, and I've done probably five to ten post marrow agreements that actually got signed. Now, people come in and they want them, but they often lead to a divorce. Basically, they're harder than pups, and the standards are a lot different than prenups. What are the standards? For example? For prenups, no consideration is required.

Consideration means something barred in for an exchange, or if you give me this, I'll give you that, Whereas in a post marital agreement there is a requirement of consideration. Somebody's got to get something for what they're giving up. And in this case, if Carol was giving up half the marital of state, which could be five billion dollars, she would have to get something in exchange for that. It doesn't have to be equal, but there has to

be consideration for it. Next. Whereas people in a premarital agreement do not have a fiduciary duty to one another in a post marital agreement, they have a fiduciary duty, which means a lot stronger scrutiny of the agreement for fairness and so on. So in addition, in a premarial agreement, you can waive the disclosure beyond what's provided, but in a postmarril agreement, you can't wait for disclosure. There's got to be a full disclosure to both people signing the agreement.

In this case, she claims that he didn't disclose the extent of their marrit assets. Right, she made all the necessary claims to arrests, perhaps fod all those required claims. But the problem with that is we don't know the details. But you can imagine she had an attorney review it. She signed the agreement. The agreement, like most agreements between spouse's state, there was no arrest, there was no fraud, she had adequate time to review the agreement and so

on and so forth. So once she does that and the agreements notarized, it's hard to say that you didn't know what you were doing or you were pressured. In the same day, it's different. Occasionally, at these agreements, the spouses signed between each other on a piece of paper that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about wealthy people who how attorneys who reviewed it, who made a decision.

She says that he got most of the marital assets, but he's worth eleven and a half billion, and if she got five percent, that's still a lot of money to most people. I was doing the numbers like that too, and I thought that's not bad. I think I could live on I don't know. I don't know. I might have to, you know, budget on the food, but otherwise i'd be fought. Let's just say that this goes forward. How would a judge decide whether or not there was dressed,

whether or not this pass the test for a post up. Well, there's a great New York case called Hershkowitz versus Levy. You could google and it lays out the anderds. And in this twenty twenty one case, which is recent in terms of the law, talks about a post that between a self represented attorney and his wife and they agreed that after a few thousand and thirteen everything they had would be separate. And then the kidson comes along in

trying to set aside the post marital agreement. I guess wife did better than him in the marriage, and he said it was unconscionable, and there was the rest, and she didn't give him enough time to sign it. And it really lays out the law for post marital agreements, and the case says an agreement between spouses which spare on its base will be enforced according to its terms unless there's proof of unconscionability or fraud. The less overreaching

or other duct. Unconsciouent ability means shocking for the conscious. It's just not unfair. So New York's really laid out the law for post ups in a nice way in this case. So the person trying to set it aside initially has the burden to show it was unfair. So now we find out that just a day after filing this she withdrew it. So what do you make of that. Well, when there's not much of money, a deal could always

be struck. It's not like money is the issues. And she probably didn't have much of a case except bad publicity. When you're in your seventies, you probably don't need bad publicity. And either of them dead, and so a deal could be struck. Now we don't know if a deal was struck, but somebody said, hey, let's let's talk about it. We

could work something out with that kind of money. You know, maybe else you wanted was another half billion powers, you know, I mean, really, you've got to look what causes these losses between anybody, but especially well the People's not the money. It's hurt feelings, it's anger, it's resentment. And if people can sit down and talk, they can make a deal. Now, she made a deal already, but she obviously wanted more, and he has more to give. What's he going to

do with it? You know, that kind of money, it's not gonna make anybody's life different. Now, she could have reacted differently and been angry and said, it's a matter of principle, I'm not going to talk to you if ever again, I'll see you in court. But that's time consuming, and even though expense is not an issue, it's expensive. But mainly it's aggravating, emotionally disturbing. So at their age,

both in the need that kind of straps. So they did the smart thing, you know, with and workout a deal. Thanks so much, Peter. That's Peter Walser of Walls or Melcher and yodah. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news by subscribing to the Bloomberg Law Podcast

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